I have had no formal studies as an illustrator
and I have learned mostly because I wanted to make drawings of flags and coats-of-arms. My first flags were those of Kiribati, Cayman Islands, and a very primitive flag of Mexico.
Since then I have been trying to make myself a better designer. I first used Adobe Illustrator 7. Then I discovered CorelDraw 9, at first sight
being astonished by its huge collection of clipart which included flags and coat of arms, many of
which are still on FOTW. Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver, and FreeHand came next.

Juan Manuel Gabino VillascánTláhuac, Distrito Federal - México

His Personal Flag

Editors Flag

Giffers Flag

My personal flag is a three-tongued flag proportioned 3:5, divided into four horizontal parts, the upper and lower ones five times the height of middle two. The order of the colors
is as follows from top to bottom: black, white, sky blue, and yellow. Black and yellow stand for Gabino (my father’s surname); they are derived from the colors of a very common coat of arms for the Gabino surname: a black eagle on gold. Since Villascán (my mother’s surname) has no coat of arms known so far, I took the Marian colors blue and white symbolizing my mother's and my own Catholic faith. The three tongues which are actually peaks stand for the place where I was born and grew up, Mexico City and its metropolitan area, which is surrounded by mountains. They are also for my two brothers and myself, my three sons and for the Holy Trinity, representing our faith.
I was born on July 18, 1978, in Mexico City. I earned a bachelor's degree in International Business Management at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional".
From 1999 to 2000 I worked in a private school of informatics and computing where I gave lessons in Microsoft Office and provided maintenance for the computers. Between 2007 and 2011 I lived in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, where I earned a bachelors degree in Sports Coaching from the Universidad Estatal de Sonora.
From 2000 to 2004, I worked as a design assistant in the Secretaría de Economía (Economics Ministry) in Mexico City.
Since 2004, I have worked as a soccer coach in several professional and amateur levels. I also worked as a manager in a couple of gyms and as a physical education teacher in two different private schools in Mexico City and Sonora.
In 2011, I joined the teaching staff at the Universidad Estatal de Sonora. Since 2013, I've worked with the Cruz Azul Fútbol Club as the goalkeeper coach for the under 17 and under 20 teams. In addition I work as a corporate image manager for Polyrob Plastics SA de CV.
I've liked flags since I was a child, when I used to make drawings on paper. Then, I discovered the Internet and started to find flag-related topics which lead me to FOTW. Mr. Raeside gave me a chance to contribute to and edit Mexican sites, at that time under the extraordinary management of Antonio Martins.
I should end with the fact that I’m happily married to a wonderful woman named Beatriz Jiménez and we have three sons, Fer (15), Roberto (13), and José Alejandro (2 years old).

United Mexican States: These images were badly vectorized by Wikipedia without any acknowledgement nor credit to me at all. That is the reason I changed the images to these. Do you see the difference?

Mexico Coat of Arms: The coat of arms is based on a photo sent to me by the Museo Nacional de Historia and, of course, is
of rather low quality. The first flag bears a coat of arms that took me months of work and two hundred Corel files. It is wonderful.

Mexican Empire 1864-1867: My second best and second hardest.

Team New Caledonia, 2011: My third favorites were all the sports flags of New Caledonia.

Moorea-Maiao: All the flags of the French Polynesia Islands were very hard to find and learn about.

Free and Sovereign State of Jalisco: The State of Jalisco was one of my hardest to research.

Afghanistan is one of my favorite countries. My thanks to Jaume Ollé who gave me a deep knowledge about that country's flags. I'm proud that my image heads the Afghan page in FOTW.

My most challenging illustrations were the Coat of Arms of Mexico and all the Mexico flags series. Ninety-five percent of the images and information on Mexico came from my own research and illustrations, it was actually a very hard job. I’m happy with my original vector images of my country's coats of arms. It took some months and hundreds of files, which I still preserve. I’m still very disappointed with Wikipedia for vectorizing my gif images without giving credit. I could gladly provide better images to them if they would ask for them. I'm also disappointed with the government of my country for using my images here and there without giving credit. That is the reason why I changed many of my images to the low-quality ones.

Past Projects and Honors:

Actually I’m proud to be a member of FOTW, and to be editing my country's site.

Because of the help provided by the Mexico Secretary of the Navy, I wrote a brochure about the history of the Mexican naval flags. It is preserved in the Secretary's library.

Most of the information and images on Mexico contained on FOTW has come from me in some way. I developed a system of numbering the Mexican national flags through history for FOTW. Since then my system
was borrowed by Wikipedia and other official and unofficial sites, again with no credits. Still I'm proud of it.